African and African American Studies Program at Claflin University

About the Program

The Program of African and African American Studies (AAAS) is an interdisciplinary program that is seriously committed to bringing a renewal of awareness of the African and African American experience to Claflin University and the surrounding community. We are further committed to assisting students to gain a sense of appreciation of their heritage so that they are empowered to move forward relentlessly in pursuit of their academic goals, and to navigate through American society with a sense of pride and a deeper understanding of they world they live in. Our courses are designed not only to teach students about the history of African and African Americans, but to challenge them to observe and critically assess the dynamics of American social, political, legal, economic and religious structures and policies that have impacted the lives of Black people here and abroad. Further, students are challenged to critically address ways in which structures, institutions and policies continue to shape and influence their own lives today.

Only the Black woman can say “when and where I enter, in the quiet undisputed dignity of my womanhood, without violence and without suing or special patronage, then and there the whole Negro race enters with me.” Anna Julia Cooper

Education must not simply teach work, it must teach life. -W.E.B. DuBois

A race of people is like an individual man; until it uses its own talent, takes pride in its own history, expresses its own culture, affirms its own selfhood, it can never fulfill itself.
-Malcolm X

A man can’t ride your back unless it’s bent -Martin Luther King

We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society -Angela Davis